I catered!!!!

I catered!!!!

So a while back, I took a cooking class at one of those fancy schmancy high end cooking supply stores in Arlington. The class itself was eh, but the instructor was wonderful. Chef Kathleen and I traded emails, and she encouraged me to come to a few classes out at the Lorton Workhouse, a re-vamped former federal penitentiary turned community arts center. She's setting up the culinary arts program there, so I started working through the 6 week Intro to Culinary Arts course in early January.

Have you ever had that moment where you just realize what it is that you really truly love? It's the quintessential click moment. The planets, stars, comets, and even spaceships align in perfect cosmic harmony.

I love to cook. And now, I was finally getting the basic tools to make my food even awesomer. From the moment Chef adjusted my knife grip, things all took off.

Like most professionals in the DC area, I like my job. I do well there, but there's definitely something else I'd rather do during the day. And cooking is it. But the realization of my love brought additional frustrations...why go to cooking school after I already have a bachelors? I don't want to work in a restaurant. I did the waitress thing, and I wasn't impressed with how high stress the kitchen was—my job is high stress enough as it is. And even if I did, I don't think quitting a moderately well paying job with benefits to go back to school is a great idea. Teaching would be fun...but who wants to learn from someone without a resume?

“Hey, Chef...you have a catering company, right?” I asked while we were cleaning up after class a few weeks ago.

“Sure do.”

“Do you ever need help?”

“What are you doing on the 28^th?” Turns out, she's often short handed for the smaller dinner parties. And she just happened to have a dinner for 25 at Paradise Springs Winery in Clifton!

To say I was excited for this opportunity is an understatement. I woke up every day, eager because I was one day closer to Catering Day. Seriously, we're talking, like, 5-year-old-on-Christmas-Eve excited. I may or may not have had a count down.

I got to the winery about 3pm, where I was immediately greeted by some very friendly staff who directed me to the back kitchen. A big hug from Chef, then some directions to get started on the portabello red wine reduction for the filet...then the apricot glaze for the salmon...then I did more chopping, cleaning, a taste consultation on the lobster bisque, and made a maitre'd butter for the bread plates. Finally, after hours of prepping and cooking, the dinner guests arrived and we began plating our courses. Lobster bisque...then a salad...then their choice of filet or salmon with my sauces and roasted vegetables, followed by the most luscious and rich chocolate mousse I'd ever had, topped with a raspberry sauce.

And then we got to clean each and every pot. The winery is still new, and doesn't have room for Chef to leave her equipment there between gigs. Which meant after scrubbing everything, we (Chef, her son, and I) had to load up her mobile kitchen into the back of her car.

It was nearly 10pm by the time I was on my way home. I was exhausted—my back hurt. My feet hurt. My knees hurt. My hands hurt.

And I was grinning like a slap happy idiot.

I had found my bliss.

And can I just say, this winery rocks. About 20 minutes into my catering travels, I met Jane, the winery owner. She was so warm and friendly, even though I was just the “kitchen help.” In fact, everyone is wonderful there. Honestly, I'd be ignored by the winery workers, since I was just outside kitchen help. Quite the opposite—even though we only had a few minutes to talk, you could tell that Jane was just thrilled to be owning a winery. Her sons, Kurt and Drew, were equally warm and hospitable. The tasting room manager, Ashley, was a ton of fun to chat with while she hung out in the kitchen on her breaks, as were all the other wine stewards on staff that day.

For the past couple years, I've told myself that I've always wanted to run away and work at a winery. Half way through sauteing shallots for the apricot glaze, I realized...I was working at a winery. Check one off the bucket list for Mel!

It's inspired to me to write a Foodie Bucket List—a list of things I want to cook, eat, or otherwise experience in the food world. I'm posting it as a tab on this blog as an added level of accountability for my culinary actions!

Eat well, friends!!

Rendering Lard

I think I have officially gone off the deep end.

Way off.

Fatback

I rendered my own lard.

I know what you're thinking. “Lard is so unhealthy for you! It's all fat and fat is evil! Lard is something used by our less educated, unhealthy ancestors who didn't know a damn thing about nutrition.” Yeah, right. Except when our ancestors used lard, no one was overweight. Or had heart disease. Or obesity-related illnesses like high blood pressure, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, or any of the other horrible things we suffer from today. In fact, that stuff only really started making an appearance after Americans began shifting away from healthy, local whole foods towards manufactured foods that were more likely to have started in a petri dish than from a seed.

Pure animal fats are full of the healthy oleic fatty acids that lower cholesterol, slow down heart disease, and encourage the production of antioxidants...so basically, a responsible use of lard is a good thing!

Now, I love to cook. Capital L-love. Cooking is my respite. At the end of a long day, all I want to do is come home, cook up something awesome, and relish in the beautiful after aromas lingering through my home. I'm always looking for the next best ingredient, the best technique, or the perfect pan to make my next meal the awesomest thing I've ever concocted.

It starts...

So my new experiment is cooking with lard. I've heard it's what makes the perfect pie crust, and is great for sauteing veggies. I've heard it's great for frying too, even though that's not the strongest technique in my repertoire.

Yesterday, I visited my new favorite store, The Organic Butcher of McLean, a small boutique shop near my office. Their prices are actually pretty reasonable (which is impressive considering McLean is one of the most expensive places to live in an area where the cost of living is already through the roof!) and I love how all their meats are clearly marked with what farm they're from. I picked up ½ lb of awesome bacon and a pound of fatback. I did some googling during my lunch break, and a bunch of articles said fatback is the way to go.

After like, 2 hours, still not done. 

I didn't particularly feel, nor did I have the time, to stir a simmering pot of animal fat all evening. So I cut that stuff up and dumped it in my crock pot on low. I found an article online that swore the whole thing would be done in three hours.

It lied.

The process was great, clean, and easy...but took much longer than three hours.

Finally!

First, chop your pieces of fatback into smaller chunks. The smaller, the better—the fat will render out faster, and you'll have more manageable pieces of cracklins left over when all is said and done.

Second, walk away for an hour. Come back, stir it, then walk away again. Repeat until the fat has rendered out and only crunchy fried bits of Southern goodness remain. 

I strained the fat through a small juice sieve over a wide mouthed Mason jar (with the handle resting on a glass for balance). 

It's that easy!

Lessons Learned:

• Cut your fat back into itty bitty pieces. I cut them into chunks, so not all the fat was able to render out completely. Smaller pieces would actually make cracklins. Not the ugh-a-licious bits of grossness I ended up with. (I took a bite. I regret that decision).
• Do it all at once. I had to let the lard render out over night, but then hit the snooze button a few too many times. I didn't want to burn anything while I was at work, so I turned the crock pot off and just let it hang out all day . It got another couple hours on high after work to make it pourable into the Mason jar. Because of this, I got a smokier flavor to the lard than I wanted. This batch won't be good for baking, but is perfectly fine for sauteing!
• Next time, I want to try rendering it on the stove. Or just render more lard at once. I wanted to start small since its my first time, but the fat barely covered the bottom of my very large crock pot. I'd probably get better cracklins if there was more liquid to fry in!
  
  
  
  
  

The White Collar Redneck

Well, here it is. Another year, another new blog.

Last year, I began a journey of culinary discovery as I attempted to live on my own, sans roommate and sans parents, for the very first time. I scrunched myself, my two cats, and all my belongings into a tiny, 490 square foot, 8^th floor studio in the 'burbs of DC. I downsized from a beautiful, spacious kitchen with a gas stove to a tiny kitchenette. There was maybe 18 inches of counter space, and an electric stove that left ugly burn rings on my precious Le Creuset pans.

I titled my original blog The Studio Foodie, in homage to my first on-my-own apartment. I moved out about 10 months later, and am now renting the basement of a townhome not far away. As I began to grow out of my tiny space, I began to grow out of the blog too. What started as a simple 'how to cook things in a tiny space' memoir began to shift into something a little bigger.

Over the past year, I've begun to adopt a “suburban homesteading” philosophy. I'm working to become more and more self-reliant, with certain adaptations. I mean, as much as I'd like to, I can't set up a generator in my back yard. HOA rules (and my landlord!) won't allow it. I also have a full time job with at least a 2 hour round trip commute each day—I just don't have time to live a truly pioneer lifestyle. But I do what I can.

“White collar redneck” is a term I came up with to describe my residence in the cross hairs of cultural and socio economic stereotypes.

I grew up the oldest child of two college educated parents, who chose to raise their family in a blue collar, working class town. In one school, I was teased as “the little rich girl” because my daddy was the only daddy on the block who wore a suit to work. I transferred to another, and was bullied for being “white trash.” My mom stayed home, so with only one income to pay the bills, we learned to stretch what we had and waste nothing.

Jeff Foxworthy once defined “redneck” as the “glorious absence of sophistication.” It is not defined by class or income level, but by action. For instance, I'm employed but a large, international consulting firm. Our employees are clad in expensively tailored suits and drive luxury vehicles. I drink out of Mason jars and drive a Saturn.

As my mama always told me, and her mama before her, and her mama before her...remember who you are, what you are, and where you came from. I'm proud of my redneck roots, and I'm blessed to have the opportunities I've been given.